3 Indian films to screen at Zanzibar International Film Festival

Three Indian films have been selected in the Competition section of the 16th Zanzibar International Film Festival in East Africa: OASS-The Dew Drop by Abhinav Tiwari, In God’s Land by Pankaj Rishi Kumar and The Barefoot Grandmamas by Yasmin Kidwai.

A total of 80 films will be screened in 4 categories at the festival.

The festival will run from June 29-July 7, 2013.

OASS-The Dew Drop, a fiction film by Abhinav Tiwari revolves around Kiku who is sold by her aunt to prostitution when barely in her teens. Kiku struggles to come to terms with her reality. She tries to escape, three times, risking torture from her “owners” each time.

In God’s land, a documentary by Pankaj Rishi Kumar traces a village’s unique journey to fight oppression of the Vanamamalai Temple after the mythical birth of their village God Sudalai Swami. Now that the clergy owns the land, the settlers are reduced to being tenant farmers and must make way for redevelopment after the land is sold off for a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). A dispute over ‘god’s land’ begins.

In Yasmin Kidwai’s documentary The Barefoot Grandmamas (Uganda/India), women from across six countries come together to train as Solar Engineers and travel to India to be a part of the Barefoot College in Tilonia, Rajasthan – a pioneer in solar electrification in remote rural villages since 1989.